Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

How do you modify ASTs?


I support HTML, JS, Python and CSS. For HTML, (not technically an AST), I give the LLM the original-file HTML source, and then I instruct it to write python code that uses BeautifulSoup to modify the HTML. Then I get the string back from python of the full HTML file, modified according to the user prompt.

For python changes I use ast and astor packages, for JS I use esprima/escodegen/estraverse, and for CSS I use postcss. The process is the same for each one: I give the original input souce file, and I instruct the LLM to parse the file into AST form and then write code that modifies that AST.

I blogged about it here if you want more details! https://codeplusequalsai.com/static/blog/prompting_llms_to_m...


I took a look at your project and while it's nice (technically), for the actual use case shown, I can't see the value over something like the old Dreamweaver with a bit of training.

I still think like prompting is still the wrong interface for programming systems. Even though they're restricted, configurations forms, visual programming with nodes, and small scripts attached to objects on a platform is way more reliable and useful.


Appreciate you having a look and for that feedback, thanks - I do agree I have work to do to prove that my idea is better than alternatives. We'll see...




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: